The previous day I came to Melk where I visited the Melk Abbey – a world famous baroque Benedictine monastery constructed atop a rock over the Danube River. The abbey was founded in the 11th century and soon it became a major site for the production of manuscripts. The impressive library houses today a great collection of them. As the year 2009 was declared the International Year of Astronomy many historic books and instruments were also exhibited, including globes with the then coordinates.

The abbey church has a very rich interior with magnificent frescos, stuccos and marble decorations. In 2008 the Stift Melk has been nominated the “Best Historic Destination” by the “National Geographic Traveler Magazine”. To celebrate the award the local authorities organized a “MIT-FREU-FEST” – a feast for the local people and invited guests that also allowed a free entry to all corners of the monastery. A rich collection of the Benedictine museum starts with the statue of St Benedict standing in front of the word Höre (Latin: obsculta, English: listen) – one of the mottos of the Benedictine Confederation (others being widely known are pax – peace and ora et labora (et lege) – pray and work (and read)).

I stayed overnight on an agritourism farm, in the morning had a full farmer’s breakfast with delicious home-baked bread (the landlady bakes 150 kg of bread every other day) and at 9:00 AM I set off towards the west. I drove along the Danube on the northern bank having great views on the abbey and the river that was almost half a kilometre wide. In Pöchlarn I crossed the river and continued on the south bank along the B1 road, then turned south into a crowded, side road towards Purgstall an der Erlauf. The further way led to Gresten where I turned north and along a valley I drove for ca. 2 km. Then I turned left, crossed the railway track, passed by a single farm and arrived at the forest edge and the confluence monument. There I parked the car and went back some 100 m to a small pond.

The pond was fenced in and I had to stretch my arm over the fence to get all zeroes on the GPS display. It was a perfect spring morning among hills and woods. There was a small valley to the east and a steep grassy slope to the north.

Having taken pictures I returned to the confluence monument. It bore emblems of Gresten-Land (municipality), Niederösterreich (federal state of Lower Austria), Österreich (Austria), and Europe on its side walls. On top there was a globe and the whole construction was also a water well (dry at that moment). The inscription on the stone read: An diesem Punkt kreuzt sich der 15. Längengrad östlich von Greenwich mit dem 48. Breitengrad. Vermessungsamt Scheibbs 29. Juni 1987. Actually, the coordinates of the monument according to WGS’84 were N 47º 59.961’, E 14º 59.940’.

A nearby information board explained what the following have in common: Gresten-Land, Le Mans, Freiburg, Miskolc, Gmünd, and Catania – all these sites lie either on the 48th parallel of latitude or on the 15th degree of longitude. Because the 15th meridian defines the Central European Time zone then slightly exaggerating one can say that the whole Europe adjust clocks to Gresten time, said the story on the board.

I wish I could stay longer in such a nice place but I still had some way to go so after a short rest I get into the car and drove further to the west.